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Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

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Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#341
fzf, integrated with:

- shell's ^R (history), ^T (args), ^P ($EDITOR)

- vim's ^P and p (open), b (buffers), r (tags)

and small little tools of my own like kd (mentioned around here), or vim's - to go up from file to dir in netrw, that allows to jump to any place of my filesystem quickly.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#342
post #158

Black, flake8, isort and mypy (with several type strengthening flags) have together ensured that Python editing and code reviews are an absolute breeze. The structure basically disappears, and all that I ever need to concentrate on is the actual change. Sure, you can use your IDE to achieve some of this, but this is where the 80/20 rule really breaks down: since each IDE differs in the details, at some point auto-for…

Python beginner here. Can you please elaborate on how you use Black, flake8, isort and mypy for code editing and code reviews?

If you are a python beginner, don't try to do everything at once, it's too hard.

Start with black. It's very easy to setup, and the reward is great.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#343

I would definitely say PHPStorm. The amount of productivity gains are tremendous. A lot of good editors have the issue that they are quite rigid when it comes to operating between multiple languages. So while your editor may shine at JavaScript, it won't understand vuejs templates or when you put Javascript code inside a php file. This is where PhpStorm really shines. It can even complete your SQL statements inside p…

I go with IntelliJ, which is basically the same with slightly more Java-ified shortcuts. And I agree, it's incredible how much time a good IDE can save you.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#344

I would definitely say PHPStorm. The amount of productivity gains are tremendous. A lot of good editors have the issue that they are quite rigid when it comes to operating between multiple languages. So while your editor may shine at JavaScript, it won't understand vuejs templates or when you put Javascript code inside a php file. This is where PhpStorm really shines. It can even complete your SQL statements inside p…

The documentation from JetBrains is horrible. I still could not configure the correct build step for XML-based javax forms as part of Gravel build process. And that’s supposed to be one of the easiest parts?

In general, I agree that JetBrains could improve their docs. However, you very rarely need them.

I mean, your problem kind of sounds like it should be explained in the javax or Gravel manuals, but not in the JetBrains IDE manual.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#345

1) Any terminal that you can summon/dismiss with a global hotkey. Examples are Guake for Linux and iTerm2 for OSX. I consider this a must-have for all developers. 2) Anything that lets you resize/place windows with hotkeys. For example, Divvy for OSX. Divvy is also nice because if you press the hotkey multiple times, it cycles the application through each of your monitors. No need to ever use your mouse to move/resiz…

> Any terminal that you can summon/dismiss with a global hotkey

Thanks! I didn't know I need this until I tried it!

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#346

VSCode, and/or Sublime Text have probably saved me a hundred hours I would have spent waiting for Eclipse to start.

That seems odd to me. I basically never close my IDE. Sure, I might put the laptop to sleep in between or disconnect from the remote desktop server, but I rarely need the 500 MB that my IDE consumes, so there's little point in every closing it.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#347
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Settings Sync is going to be included in the next release of VS Code. Yay! The amount of work Microsoft is putting in this editor is amazing. Last month we got file history, that was the last thing I needed to ditch the Git GUI I had installed.

I use vscode but it's missing some basic code features for me. The biggest for me is probably keyboard macros, something that's been a basic feature of editors since at least the 80s. Keyboard macros in other editors has saved me 100s of hours. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/4490

There's a `macros` extension that's pretty good: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=geddski....

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#348

1) Any terminal that you can summon/dismiss with a global hotkey. Examples are Guake for Linux and iTerm2 for OSX. I consider this a must-have for all developers. 2) Anything that lets you resize/place windows with hotkeys. For example, Divvy for OSX. Divvy is also nice because if you press the hotkey multiple times, it cycles the application through each of your monitors. No need to ever use your mouse to move/resiz…

> 1) You don't need a separate terminal just for that. It's better to automate your window manager to open the terminal. I use this with tmux and i3: #!/usr/bin/env bash tmux new-window -t 0 -c "$1" i3-msg 'workspace 1' # switch to i3 workspace where my terminal is placed I also use distinct hotkeys to specify which directory to cd to (the script above accepts a directory as argument).

Why is it "better"?

I rarely want to open a new window, I want a terminal that I never close, that stays in the background until I call it forward. And it has to be available on any workspace ("space" on macOS). Iterm does all of that perfectly

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more.. People who say Electron (on which VSCode is running) is bloated and is slow probably haven't worked on full fledged IDEs using Java.. they consume memory in Gigabytes, are slower, at least appear to be slower, despite using native UI and takes a lot longer to open.

How often do you open your IDE though? I switched form VSCode to PHPStorm half a year ago, and while it feels a bit slower, the improvements are so unbelievable worth it for me. It does have a taste for memory, but then again, it easily saves me a lot of time each month, so just throwing RAM at it was a no-brainer for me.

In my case, often several times an hour. I work across 6-10 dofferent repositories. Opening them all at once is impractical, so being able to open each of the them quickly is quite important.
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